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It's love,' they say. You touch the right one and a whole half of the universe wakes up, a new half.

William Stafford

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William Stafford
Age: 79 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 17
Died: 1993
Died: August 28
Author
Poet
Writer
Hutchinson
Kansas
Love
Wakes
Touch
Half
Universe
Whole
Right

More quotes by William Stafford

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One way to find your place is like the rain, a million requests for lodging, one that wins, finds your cheek: you find your home.
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A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
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And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
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When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation.
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Security of character would be like a compass, you know? Other people may say that this way is north, or this way might be north. But the compass just says -- north. That's what we count on.
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.
William Stafford
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I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along.
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I am not learning definitions as established in even the latest dictionaries. I am not a dictionary-maker. I am a person a dictionary-maker has to contend with. I am a living evidence in the development of language.
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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Once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold, found some limit beyond the waterfall, a season changes and we come back changed but safe, quiet, grateful.
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Keep a journal, and don't assume that your work has to accomplish anything worthy: artists and peace-workers are in it for the long haul, and not to be judged by immediate results.
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The root and the flower have to trust each other. If the root does not trust, the plant won't blossom.
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Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now?
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They miss the whisper that runs any day in your mind, Who are you really, wanderer?-- and the answer you have to give no matter how dark and cold the world around you is: Maybe I'm a king.
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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
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It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.
William Stafford